Comment by AtlasBarfed | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AtlasBarfed | Hacker News Reader

Off grid is getting so much closer to plug and play, and I think it will dovetail with RV-EVs and (highway) self-driving.

Your RV will be likely a PHEV with a big honking battery and some compact generator (those inside-out rotaries look promising, or a fuel cell, even though I'm a major hydrogen skeptic).

It'll have solar on the RV roof, plus a fold-out solar array when parked (doubles as a canopy) that will provide ample power for an off-grid level of lifestyle. The EV battery doubles as a battery backup for the solar, and the PHEV hybrid range extender doubles as a backup generator.

You could even do some sort of fifth wheel + enhanced battery. Big problem with towing in an EV pickup is the range, but that's because we don't typically think about the possibility of the trailer RV having a big battery, and that can be linked to the Pickup truck's battery for enhanced all-electric range.

Communication? Starlink. In the area in the article, you don't even have trees that would intermittently block the satellite tracking.

For longer term offgrid, water collection and sanitation are the big challenges, well, and emergency services.

It's a shame the industry didn't go all-in on PHEVs when hybrids appeared ... TWENTY FIVE YEARS AGO. Five years after the Insight/Prius there should have been a plug in hybrid in every consumer segment, with subsidies to make them cheaper than pure ICE drivetrains. We would have likely electrified 60-90% of daily drive trips.

I still think an aggressive PHEV policy should complement policies for EV adoption, but I doubt automakers will invest in new hybrid drivetrains, given the choice of the massive engineering switch to EV drivetrain and a new hybrid drivetrain, most will just go EV and limp along with whatever legacy ICE drivetrains they have in the meantime.

Especially CEOs get fired if they don't adopt EV drivetrains. Hell they get fired if they don't switch over fast enough (see: VW).

Just an FYI (I know you were talking about PHEV): some people have tried & tested the EV-for-RV route and found it wanting, in the sense that you can rarely plan on driving more than 100 miles at a time despite huge battery systems for the engine. The extra weight really makes a huge difference.

Solar-for-everything-but-the-engine is already a conventional reality unless you need air conditioning, and even that is becoming possible.

Water collection is not a technical problem, but a climate one. West of the 100th meridian, not enough water falls from the sky to collect, most of the year. Even in wetter areas, however, collecting enough water between rainfalls for the needs of even two people is not completely trivial.

America: Where it seems easier to solve self-driving and live indefinitely in the commons of the Interstate Highway System, than it does to just own a reasonable goddamn house.

My wife and I were raised in the suburbs in Colorado, in relatively large homes/condos/apartments and we owned a decent sized home in the suburbs for a bit. We've steadily moved into smaller and smaller apartments, in denser and denser city areas until now when we live innthe heart of SF in a pretty small apartment. We're much happier. We also own an RV for when we need to get out of the city for a respite. If you look at total quality of life, at least how my wife and I see it, it's not really about maximizing your square footage and acreage, it's about maximizing your community and activities you love to do. The latter often points to a smaller more modest home, and more community and opportunity.

I need to give up my woodworking hobby first — it needs a lot of (garage) space.

DIY furniture is not cheap compared with mass-produced even without considering time, so giving up the hobby is a sound financial decision. For huge cost savings, there is a large market of used furniture available private-party.

Edit: Hobbies certainly aren't practical, but there is often a practical aspect associated with them used as a justification, e.g. for having fresher vegetables or unusual varieties not sold in a supermarket/co-op. I bring up cost with woodworking as it's a notoriously expensive hobby, especially second-order costs such as the decision to own a single-family home or a larger vehicle.

Isn’t the “it’s not cheap compared to mass produced.” sort of the description of a hobby? I bake (on and off) as a hobby and while that is comparatively simple in terms of equipment, if I start considering the time and actual costs, the pretty expensive hipster bakery starts to look more and more appealing. Same for the vegetables we grow in our garden.

Nobody gets into woodworking to save money on furniture. They do it because it’s a hobby they enjoy.

Ah yes hobbies, what we do solely for profit... Some of the people posting on HN really makes me lose all faith in humanity

There are a number of serious flaws with what you wrote. The first is what others commented on.. you confuse "hobby" with "for profit".

Next is this :

> DIY furniture is not cheap compared with mass-produced even without considering time,

Do you honestly believe that "mass-produced" furniture is anywhere near the same quality as DIY?

Ikea - Where you can buy a bookshelf which will not be able to hold the weight of books.

DiY - Where you use dado's and plywood and end up with bookshelf's which can easily hold a few hundred pounds.

My most prized possessions are the quilts my mother made for us, the jewelry and furniture my father made for us and my grandparents (and I've since inherited) and us. I would rather have those things than all the money in the world. Yes, my parents could have traded in their stuff 30 years ago and invested the money, and handed me a pile of money instead, but I would have lost my soul, my heritage, my history. I'm grateful they didn't, and I hope that the parent commenter doesn't either. I hope the parent commenter keeps making furniture that is meaningful to them and theirs.

There are things worth far more than money.

Yeah it is because DIY wood working usually needs real wood, not particle board.

What if you don't want to inhale the stuff mass produced furniture is outgassing? With DIY you have at least a slight chance to avoid that, by choosing your materials accordingly.

I'm in a similar situation, but instead of an RV I have a farm to retreat to.

There are plenty of cheap buildings further away where you can have space to tinker and spread out, which is fun. The city is for socializing and 20 square meters are more than enough. Splitting time between both (city on weekend and farm on weekdays when everyone is busy) is pretty ideal for me.

Personally my goal is to put as many acres as I can afford between me and other people. Living in small apartment where I have to share a fucking stairwell with others is a kind of hell for me.

Get out of SF and you’ll find it’s a very normal and achievable to own a decent house by the time you’re 30, and you don’t need to be in software to make it happen.

That's becoming increasingly less true of anywhere with a reasonable quality of life, or that has any kind of desirable or interesting nature. Wages outlying areas and smaller towns are also quite a bit less.

This hasn't been true for a long time now. The cost of housing has far outpaced wages and even houses in and around smaller cities sell for high prices because they're catering to those software developers working remote but wanting to live somewhere near society.

Considering I'm in my 30s and have been working in a software job and cannot afford a home, I strongly suggest reevaluating your metrics.

There are plenty of places in America between the extremes of San Francisco real-estate pricing and Colorado off-grid living.

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